Saturnine

by Dan Abnett

  ‘What are they?’ Hari asked, very quietly. ‘What are they? What are they? What-‘

  ‘I dunno,’ muttered Piers. ‘I don’t care. But I’m thinking daemons.’

  Hari made a sound that almost had a question mark on the end.

  ‘Daemons, boy,’ Piers repeated. ‘Shit-arse, for-real daemons.’ He spat, and put the caliver up to his cheek, sighting. He started to mutter, ‘Mythrus, war-lady, you useless bitch, wherever you are, send your old soldier some grace now, for shit’s sake, I’m begging you…’

  The things were closing.

  ‘There’s no…’ said Hari, trying to sound as clear and certain as he could, as if that would clear everything up. ‘There’s no such thing as daemons.’

  ‘Oh, we’re all right then,’ said the grenadier.

  He snuggled into his aim.

  ‘Ten metres!’ he yelled.

  ‘We’re bloody dead, Olly!’ someone shouted.

  ‘You bloody will be if I hear you say that again!’ the grenadier roared. ‘Ten metres! Final offer! Going once, going twice…’

  The things came up to them, bounding, leaping, eager, their jaws open to bite and snap. The ragged line of troopers began to shoot The rippling barrage made Hari jump.

  The grenadier’s first shot was a raking beam of blue-hot light.

  It burst the frontrunner, splitting it apart from front to back and dropping it in the dust, steaming, bloody bones open to the sunlight. To the big grenadier’s left, an Excertus squadder with an old autocannon slew a second, ripping it into chunks of meat with a burst of fire. Lasrifles and hard-round guns cracked and popped.

  Old Bess whined back to power, and Piers fired again, knocking another beast off its feet. The beam left a smoking hole the size of a dinner plate clean through its body. The squadder’s autocannon kept blurting, cones of flash dancing around her muzzle, spent casings flying out in a jingling spray. A militia man with a lasrifle scored a kill. It had taken him four hits to do enough damage to stop his target in its tracks.

  The grenadier’s caliver whined back up to power. Slower this time, straining.

  ‘Come on, Bessie me girl, come on,’ Piers crooned, taking sight. ‘Upland Tercio, hooo!’ he yelled above the volleying gunfire.

  He fired a third time. The caliver let off a less emphatic beam. It clipped a beast, and knocked it flat, but it writhed in the dust and got up again, blood bubbling from a gouge in its shoulder.

  ‘P-piers…’ Hari mumbled.

  The caliver whined, struggling to cycle.

  ‘Piers!’

  The wounded beast lunged. Piers fired again. Just a bolt, a clumsy spit of light, but the thing was almost on them, and it was enough. It collapsed within metres of his feet.

  There were two more right behind it.

  The grenadier changed grip. He tucked the caliver’s butt under his right armpit, and reached forward for the under-barrel grip. The weapon was whining again, but it sounded feeble and exhausted, living the best it could to reheat.

  ‘Come on, then!’ Piers roared at the things bearing down on them.

  He squeezed the forward grip. The under-barrel tube coughed out a grenade with a hollow thump. The small, heavy projectile flew like a piece of well-aimed fruit, struck one of the incoming beasts head on, and disintegrated it in a cloud of flame.

  Piers pumped the under-barrel slide, and thumped off another grenade shell. It blew the second dog off its feet, and sent it cartwheeling.

  He pumped again.

  But the dogs, the beasts, were now in among them. The squadder with the autocannon was carried over. She shrieked, trying to fight her killer off, but it savaged her relentlessly, until she stopped making any sounds. Two beasts caught the militia man, and fought over his corpse, pulling it apart. Four more troopers were slammed off their feet: crunching impacts, soldiers brought down in tangles of limbs and snapping bones. Other men broke the line, and tried to run. Most didn’t get far.

  One beast came for Hari. He saw its eyes, wild and inhuman, its mouth swinging open, its belly as it launched into its leap.

  A beam of blue light snatched sideways, and sent it tumbling. Old Bess had finally recharged.

  ‘Piers!’ Hari yelled.

  The grenadier turned. The dog that had killed the squadder was coming at him from the left, its face plastered with gore. He had no charge developed. Piers thumped a grenade into its chest point-blank. The blast killed it, but the air-smack knocked the grenadier off his feet too. He got back up on his knees, dazed, ungainly, coat twisted, shako off. Another dog was running at him. A frantic pump of the mechanism. A hollow pop. The grenade demolished it. Yet another came in, from the left again. Piers swivelled, still on his knees.

  ‘Suck it, you ugly ball-bag!’ he said, and destroyed it with his last grenade.

  Piers looked up at Hari.

  ‘Sorry, boy,’ he said.

  A shadow slid across them both.

  Something thunderous mowed the ground around them. It felt as though multiple lightning strikes were earthing all at once. Hari and Piers sprawled together, arms tight around each other. It wasn’t entirely clear who had grabbed whom, or who had pulled whom flat.

  The thunder continued. Huge sprays of topsoil and dust flew up, like giant stalks of corn, stippling the ground around them. The earth under them quivered, vibrating like the skin of a drum. Beasts jerked and shredded, caught in the ferocious kinetic downpour. The air choked with yellow dust and sheets of drifting red mist.

  Hugging Piers tight, Hari looked up, almost rigid with shock. He wiped a slick of blood and dust off his face with one splayed hand.

  There was an aircraft hanging almost directly over them, hovering no more than thirty metres up. It was just a dark shape against the sky. He could feel the pummel of its downwash. Weapon pods on its underside were howling out a hail of suppression fire. The dogs, the beasts, were being slaughtered and driven back from the small knot of cowering soldiers who still remained. The ground was being systematically cleared around them.

  But a second and larger wave of beasts was already bounding in, a surging tide of what the grenadier had called ‘daemons’. A hundred or more, drawn by the scent of blood, flooding in from the ravaged convoy to feed.

  The aircraft swung away, and dropped lower to face them. Its pods chewed at the approaching tide, the rotary canons buzzing like rapid metal hammers, one long blurt of sound rather than individual shots.

  The gun-pods’ snouts were spinning crowns of flame.

  The entire front-end of the slate-grey machine opened. It sort of hinged and unfurled at the same time, plates of metal spreading, overlapping and sliding over each other.

  Hari saw something golden catch the light.

  * * *

  Prefect Tsutomu exits the Talion. He is more use on the ground. I didn’t know if there’s anyone left to save. We have arrived too late. This relief convoy is miserably annihilated. But these things must die. They are the first Neverborn I have seen inside the Palace zone.

  They are not full-blown creatures of the warp. They are human shells, soldiers of the traitor host, I believe, now a different kind of host. Mindless vessels for Neverborn spirits that have infested their flesh and remade their form. I have seen such things before in the depths of the webway, but not here, in the realspace of the Throneworld’s heart. The Custodians named them ‘witch-dogs’, but I always felt that was insulting to witches.

  I maintain suppressive fire from the helm. The prefect clears ten metres from the front hatch, and hits the ground running. He accel erates into a blur. He fires bolts from his poleaxe as he sprints, crippling and killing, cracking their line to make an opening. Then he is among them, and his castellan axe starts swinging.

  The form is superb. He has been at this duty for a long age, and has mastered the very specific skills a castellan axe requires. Elegant but brutal, a fine balance of transhuman strength, constant momentum and subtle ba
lance. It is like a dance, a whirling ballet that, once begun, cannot be halted. Unlike a sword, with which one might strike, break, re-address and strike again, axe-work must flow, stroke into stroke, or momentum will be lost and the axe become unwieldy, even for Tsutomu. In combat, a castellan axe must be kept in motion. It is a narrative of violence, not a dialogue.

  Tsutomu knows this. Blade-stroke becomes blade-stroke becomes blade-stroke. The butt of the haft is a weapon too, breaking skulls on the through-swings and returns.

  But there are many of them. From my seat, I see him: a lone figure of gold, reaping amid a broad field of dark forms. I will intercede. This work is why I came here. I set the lift systems to autonomous hold, the gun-cogitators to auto-selective. I leave the gunship to hover and kill on its own.

  I move to the open hatch. I draw Veracity, though I won’t need her. It is not far to jump.

  * * *

  ‘What is that?’ Hari whispered.

  ‘A Custodian, boy,’ Piers said. He started to laugh. ‘A Talon of the Emperor Himself! Balls of glory, look at him kill!’

  The grenadier let Hari go, and got to his knees. He began to clap find cheer, as though it was a performance just for him.

  The Custodian was a smudge of moving gold, fogged in a billowing cloud of blood. The bodies of beasts, none of them intact, littered the dust around him. He was leaving a trail of them.

  But Hari hadn’t meant the Custodian. He had meant the chill, the sudden cold. A shadow that had just passed over them, darker than the shade the aircraft had cast when it hovered over their heads.

  Something else was here, something else-

  ‘Oh shit,’ murmured the grenadier. He got to his feet, pulling on his dusty shako. He was staring, but at what, Hari couldn’t see.

  The dogs, the beasts… stopped. They froze. A few yelped and yapped. They pawed backwards, heads low, whimpering, then turned and fled, every one of them that was still alive, or what might be termed alive. They raced away in, as it seemed to Hari, sudden and abject terror. They ran back the way they had come, in their hundreds, leaving their abominable dead behind.

  The Custodian stopped swinging. He came to rest, a golden blur becoming a gilded giant. He lowered the immense axe, and stood, watching the enemy retreat.

  ‘She saved us,’ Piers murmured.

  ‘Old Bess?‘ asked Hari.

  ‘What, boy?’

  Piers walked forward. Hari stumbled after him. Everything tasted of dust and blood. The Custodian turned.

  ‘Are you alive?’ asked the Custodian. His voice was like a lead weight wrapped in silk. ‘How many of you are alive? Trooper, make an account.’

  ‘In His name, I thank you!’ Piers stammered. He had taken off his shako, and was clutching it to his chest. ‘All these years, I have left little offerings, all I could spare, so forgive me, but just what I had, little offerings to ask for your intercession…’

  Hari came up behind the grenadier. Piers wasn’t speaking to the giant in gold. He wasn’t even looking at him. He was grinning inanely at the empty air to the Custodian’s left, rambling, tears in his eyes.

  The Custodian turned his gleaming visor towards Hari.

  ‘Was this man injured?’ he asked, clipped. ‘Has he taken a blow to the head?’

  ‘I have no idea of his life story, lord,’ said Hari, ‘but there’s every chance.’

  ‘Your intercession, all I asked,’ Piers went on. ‘I’ll admit, I have cursed you, from time to time, when it never came, so I hope you’ll excuse that, but you were saving it for now, saving it for this moment, weren’t you? Saving it all up for the day I needed to be delivered from daemons!’

  ‘Piers,’ said Hari. He put a hand on the grenadier’s arm. ‘Piers. The lord Custodian is trying to talk to you.’

  ‘Well, he can see I’m busy,’ Piers snapped. ‘I must abase myself before anything else.’ He looked at the space beside the Custodian ‘Should I? Is that required? Should I abase myself?’

  ‘To whom?’ asked Hari.

  ‘I wasn’t talking to you, boy!’ Piers snapped. ‘I was talking to her!’

  ‘To-?’

  ‘To Mythrus, you flaming idiot! Show some manners, boy!’

  ‘The Custodian looked to his left. ‘Agreed, it is unusual,’ he said, as if in answer to something.

  The air around them was so cold. Hari felt sick. He squinted, and realised there was something there after all, like a broken sliver of dirty glass standing upright in the settling dust, almost invisible.

  A greasy smear of light. The impression, for a brief second, of hands moving, forming quick shapes.

  Piers had dropped to his knees.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Custodian. ‘It would appear he can see you.’

  * * *

  At that moment, a very long way away, half a world, a man arrived at his destination. It was his last stop along the way before journey’s end.

  It was the right time, and the right place, within a reasonable margin of error: the deep and stubborn heart of the PanAfrik north-west, baking in the heat, a great erg, a sand-sea. Just a few miles out; he still measured things in miles. Perhaps a few days shy. A few miles, a few days. That was an impressive degree of accuracy, given the scale with which he was obliged to work. All of times, and all of spaces, the entire cosmic map, and he had nailed it to within a few days and a few miles.

  At least, he hoped he had this time.

  He had an appointment to keep. A meeting. He wasn’t looking forward to it at all. It was going to be awkward. Too many big favours to ask from people who didn’t like him. Too many big debts to call in, and apologies to make. A lot of apologies, probably. He had pissed people off over the years. A lot of people. A lot of years.

  He was going to have to work hard, appeal to natures much better than his own.

  He stood for a moment. Soft, red sand lay all around him, quartz dusted with ferric oxide. The rolling dunes of the erg lay in the uruq manner, the long ridges flowing with the sculpting wind, like frozen breakers. Between these great banks of sand lay avenues, the shuquq, hollows between the dunes bedded with soft gypsum and seeq. There was a rocky rim of flat, black hills to the west. The sun beat down from a sky so cloudless, its blue had gone dark and hard with heal He was sweating already. He wasn’t dressed for this.

  He sighed.

  ‘Right, okay,’ said John Grammaticus to himself, and started to walk along the nearest shuquq into the west.

  PART TWO

  I AM THE FORTRESS NOW

  ONE

  * * *

  The twenty-second of Quintus

  Lateral cunning

  Pons Solar

  Yzar Chroniates of the Third Grand Battalion of the Iron Warriors, lord captain of the Second Armoured Century, came over the splintered rampart, assured his name and deeds had just become immortal, and that he would be remembered upon the honour lists as the first of Great Lupercal’s host to breach the fourth circuit wall of Gorgon Bar. Massing over a tonne of augmented, artificed Cataphractii plate, he was the first legionary to crack the inner ring of the gate defences that had held them at bay, a bellow of rage and triumph on his lips, servo-steered flamer systems mounted on the colossal shelf of his shoulders, framed by spikes – huge scaling hooks that had brought him up the sheer stone cliff of the wall – curving like an eagle’s talons from his forearms and shins, power claw spreading to strike, bolter already firing, first among conquerors.

  And the blade came the other way to meet him.

  Encarmine bit through etched plasteel. Through ceramite. Through refolded harness padding. Overlaid power systems severed and shortedin clouds of flying sparks. Coolant ducts ruptured. The blade’s course continued, its edge slicing reinforced undersuit, segmented liner, yielding flesh, and then the solid skeletal shell of the carapace, the nested transhuman organs, the spinal cord.

  Chroniates teetered on the lip of the wall, his bolter firing blindly, wildly. H
is thorax seemed to slump slightly into his abdomen, as though his immense panoply of plate was a rock face succumbing to a landslip.

  The Brightest One wrenched Encarmine free.

  Chroniates toppled backwards. As he fell, his torso hinged open, like yawning jaws, like some toymaker’s novelty, power systems exploding as cabling tore. He plunged down the sheer drop, his dismantled bulk smashing others of his kind off the stone facing, their scaling hooks tom free: Tyranthikos and Stor-Bezashk specialists cast down from the height into the smoke below. His moment of immortality had been less than a second long.

  Sanguinius did not watch his kill’s long plunge. He was turning to meet the next enemy, Encarmine a whistling band of silver, the flicker of a sunlight ray from which armoured heads tumbled and limbs parted.

  Everything was noise and motion. Blurred noise, fogged motion. The drench of blood, the shearing of metal, smoke in every seam and every pore. Feral war engulfed the Bar, accelerated to transhuman proportions, a battle of the ancient days magnified in scale, amplified in force and performed at inhuman speed. Industrial death, with no pause, no scant second of remission, no time for reflection on glory, no room for myth or even the merest kindling of myth An eight kilometre line of angled high wall, sheer as a mountain, covered in a carpet of bodies like a plague of gleaming beetles, like a mat of moss and trailing vine folded across a great stream-thwart rock, ranks of defenders above, writhing against the press of the scaling creeper-tides of traitor host ascending against them, like termites massing to overtop a rival mound.

  Smogged air, bruised black, underlit and jarred by explosive flashes of nippling brilliance, the fire-spears of detonations lancing out in sunbursts, eating the wall, shredding all in their radii with hyper-sonic shrapnel, and the jagged fragments of those already obliterated and instantaneously perished. Chains of fire from defending flamers, Jetting infernos hosing from attacking units. Stitching interference patterns of tracer and bolt-rounds. Enemy forces, some advancing under shield or covered by plated sows. Falling bodies, alive and dead. Outflung body parts, still armour-clad. The howl of focused and accelerated plasma. The shriek of chainblades. The eerie local distortion and fume of melta fields, auras of sub-atomic agitation. Red mist. Dirt. Ouslite chips flying from the teeth of scaling hooks as they dug for purchase.